Bonfire of the Vanities

Private morality does not seem to me to be the state’s business unless it compromises the public welfare.

-Bishop Shelby Spong-

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It's not the sort of thing that demands a reasoned response, but a local Catholic priest has been buying a lot of ad space in the local papers to excoriate Humanists, Atheists and free thinkers for being the main reason for the world's wars, persecutions and acts of genocide. Heretics and unbelievers you see are attacking "freedom of religion."

I used to say the ability to feel shame was the first victim of  authoritarianism but the ability to see irony obviously rides the adjacent horse. Religious freedom is under attack from those who would extend it to all, he says, quoting the party line. Why put forth such fraudulent history and demented reasoning, why demand that we persecute good people for their thoughts and beliefs by stripping them of their guaranteed rights and protection under the law? Why now?

The Beast is running scared now that 36 states recognize the right to marry whomever we wish and the fear is that freedom of  worship will be broadened to protect those with any beliefs at all, including the belief in reason alone or a belief in the dignity and freedom of mankind.   It takes a certain kind of mind to see freedom as the enemy of freedom, but as I said, shame and irony, those two things that can lead one towards legitimate morality have left the building -- or left the Church if you prefer.

But here I am, leading up to the obviously useless argument from reason and fact.  As any  historian should know, it takes violence and threats of violence to convert us, there being no valid arguments for what they've been selling for so long. The appeal to the ignorant and tribal mob, to the tinhorn crusaders against the fulfillment of the promise of liberty is of course an attempt to bypass the Supreme Court, which is scheduled today to hear a case that could result in a decision to extend marriage rights to all, regardless of  one's State of residence. I can smell the desperation and fear and it smells like burning witches.

The argument that the Federal Government does not have the right to overturn state restrictions on personal choices would seem to have been rendered moot or at least Stare Decisis after the 1967 Loving V. Virginia ruling but the persistence of ugly, irrational and often vicious tyranny is the nature of churches as Thomas Jefferson and his friends often and emphatically noted. They will not give up if they have to cut a swath through the law and decency itself to get at the devils they see everywhere and the demand that states be able to nullify Federal Law ad libidum  or according to their Bibles will not disappear any time soon.

Religious leaders are urging "liberal" members of the court to recuse themselves from hearing today's arguments in a move that seems unique to me. Asking a judge to refrain from using the law as a basis for decision is arguably bizarre if not shameful and ironic, Demanding that the courts not be able to allow sin and heresy is illegal, shameful and ironic, but as I said. . .

The Restrain the Judges on Marriage Act of 2015 -- The Protect Marriage from the Courts Act: bills to forbid "Liberal" judges from ruling on cases that might lead to decisions unfavorable to the dictates of  certain Christian churches have been introduced in the Senate and the House by the usual religious wackadoodles like Ted Cruz.  Evidently it isn't only the job of President they wish to take over by fiat.

No, I'm not trying to argue with madness, it would be madness again to do so. I'm only begging you to write your senators and congressmen and demand they respect the letter and spirit of the US constitution and vote against turning over the reins of government to would-be tyrants, waving flags, carrying Gospels and shitting on Liberty.

Christian Nation in Indiana

It's another token of our "changing" language. I put the word in quotes because it's so strange to see things like the weaponizing of words described in such benign terms, but "religious freedom" simply hasn't meant the right to perform rituals, say prayers or build places of religious exercise without restraint except to a few for a long while. 

In Indiana, or to the Indiana chapter of the Christian Caliphate in America it means the right to do any damned thing you want as long as "Christians" like the Robertsons: Phil and Pat or Reverend Phelps or a majority of the Indiana General Assembly approve. No one really, no one at all is in any doubt that, as it has in other religions, the militant wing of American Christianity is rising in power and rising in the lust for control and domination and the ability to punish people of other beliefs or thoughts or perspectives. No one fails to see how such assaults on liberty tend to thrive in places of ignorance and religious passion (you may find some correlation if you like:) places like Indiana.

No one has any doubt that if the shoe were on the other foot, and there were significant numbers of people who would refuse to service cars with those chrome fish, or religious bumper stickers or serve them at drive-through restaurants,  the Christian Nation  folks would hesitate to stand up for that kind of religious freedom and certainly they would be raising hell if "Muslims only" signs were to appear in Indiana.  No Yarmulkes inside, no cross, no service, no Irish need apply, only church goers in this neighborhood. We do not serve people with tattoos. We've been there before. We've had those tradinal values before.  Perhaps those who keep telling me we've made little progress aren't entirely wrong.  Certainly the spirit of hate and exclusivity thrives, along with talk of beheadings and rape and castration, damnation and brimstone by bearded zealots, to the cheering of the mob.

So yes, freedom of religion now means something close to its opposite and to be evil, nasty and mean --  contemptuous of  truth and justice is to have Christian values, to have "faith."   None of the claims made about life liberty, the pursuit of happiness, about freedom and justice for all are in any way compatible with the goals of the Christian Nation in America people any more than they are with the Islamic State people and yet the damnation is so faint and public discourse so filled with pop culture, celebrity surgery, the latest product from Apple, transportation calamities and the angelic innocence of Michael Brown.  Not only the language has been prostituted, but so have our thoughts and concerns, at least that's the goal. Denialism, lack of definable terms, amorphous logic, conspiracy theories and fear are the means, tyranny is the end.

The day we celebrate

Of course the paper this morning contained the usual happy crap about celebrating FREEDOM as though we had either more of it or a better kind than Canada or most of Europe who have embraced the principles of Democracy and the rights of Man we seem to reject every Sunday as we yearn for the Divine right of Government.  What the day is about is political independence and independence from a government that denied us the right to Parliamentary representation it was legally obligated to provide while requiring us to identify the King's right to be king with a state church. It was about our right to fair representation as citizens, as equal participants in government regardless of wealth and importance and heredity and not about a tea tax.

As you watch the sound and fury of the fireworks, remember that the people selling themselves as patriots, the people talking about freedom in saccharine tones, really mean control by a powerful aristocracy allied with a narrow, sectarian interpretation of a certain religion.

"Blessed is the nation whose god is the Lord"  begins the full page full color newspaper insert payed for by the Hobby Lobby. It leaves off the next stanza: "the people he chose for his inheritance" which of course in that context means the Jews. It also mistranslates אשר־יהוה,  asher-Yaveh as the lord so those who think 'Jesus is Lord' will think it means them. The arrogance and the dishonesty would be amusing if the intent were not so insidious, because Our friends at Hobby Lobby, glowing like the face of Moses in their victory over secular law, have asserted their commitment to and aspiration toward a government Dei Gratia.  They assert their version of the Bible as the best source of normative morality.

The flag-bedecked page is packed with references to Supreme Court decisions from the 1830's supporting the public schools as the place to pray and teach Christianity and out-of-context quotes from the very anti-religious founding fathers like James Madison and Thomas Jefferson about the Christian Bible being the basis of all true morality. (No mention of course of the Bible backed, God tolerated institutions of wife beating and slavery and rape and genocide and banishment of non-Jewish people from holy land.)

No religion is about freedom, they are all about orthodoxy and uniformity of belief to the exclusion of other ideas and practices.  Freedom of worship is not freedom to enforce religious orthodoxy or religious law on others. No religion is about free choice, Democracy or the inherent rights of man.  No one in America has claimed the right to dictate your thoughts about divinity but religious organizations. Your prayers, your right to congregate and worship are guaranteed against the influence of  the Hobby Lobby and our constitution forbids our government to do what they insist is the right thing to do:  Establish and enforce  some form of Christian doctrine as the law of the land. If this be freedom, then freedom is slavery and the American Revolution against a divinely inspired Christian king we pretend to celebrate today was not only fought in vain, but was blasphemy and an unholy act.

No Reason Allowed

Here Comes Easter again. Easter and the media puff pieces about how it's really all true enough in one sense or another and how it's wrong to say that it's a borrowed holiday, re-badged from pre-Christian European fertility cults, egg laying rabbits and all.  The Easter holiday (is it OK to call this one a holiday?) carries a large basket of  baggage without my needing to illustrate its long history and I'm quite as content to let people celebrate it as they will as I am to let anyone celebrate anything at any time including life itself.  It's a wonderful life after all, and not just at Christmas.

In the true spirit of American small mindedness however, others are not so happy with your freedom when it comes to protecting their hermetically sealed belief bubble from questions or against having to be aware of other ways of seeing and appreciating life in our shared world.  But I'm OK with that too if only for the humor.  Seeing an image of  an all year "Prayer Station" set up in the Warren Michigan city hall looking for all the world like something from the Peanuts comic strip, put a smile on my face in a way that only irony-blind religious fervor can. Reason isn't funny and I do like to laugh.

Not so funny though when Warren resident Douglas Marshall proposed a "Reason Station" for the same venue and  the Mayor, Jim Fouts  not only rejected it, but banned any such display for a year because after all, Marshall is an advocate for separation of Church and State.    Using a government facility as a church and to promote Christianity ( assuming it isn't praying to Vishnu or the Chinese Kitchen God being solicited) is simply no problem in this Detroit suburb.  Atheism is not a religion wrote Fouts to Marshal and his Freedom From Religion Foundation, unwittingly asserting that only a religion can have access to public space and non-Christian interests need not apply. Besides it might disturb the faithful, which is, in his words, a Constitutional violation!

What about equal protection, freedom of speech and all that Godless, Commy nonsense?  Don't make me laugh.  This is Michigan after all and in Michigan reason can fend for itself and you can take your Jeffersonian Humanism straight back to Moscow where it belongs.

Faith Drivers

Faith Driven Consumer is an "on-line community" (business) that steers the Faith Driven toward businesses that seem compatible with their beliefs.  There's nothing unique about it really, no different than the dating service for farmers,  or directories of gay-owned companies or of environmentally friendly enterprises. Hey, it's a free country - unless of course you ask the people who despise censorship, but still want to dictate to retail stores what language their signage can use (English, of course) or can't use (Spanish or course - it's still OK to call snails Escargot or Dolphin fish Mahi-Mahi.) It's OK When We Do It is as much the foundation for American politics and popular sentiment as it ever was.

I can't say that I reject the idea of putting pressure on private business concerns with regard to all kinds of things per se, but it's as close to being censorship to do so as is the firing of Phil Robertson because of some offensive comments.

I've had it emphatically pointed out to me that with certain exceptions, a business may hire or fire whom they please for any reason they please and this is certainly a right that's staunchly defended by conservatives.  Tell a business it has to hire minorities and we'll certainly hear about freedom to hire and fire as we please. Tell a business it has to send a paycheck to someone who damages the marketability of the product and hear the conservatives quack like ducks - and rightly so.

The FDC folks have put up a website where you're asked to sign a petition demanding that A&E reinstate Robertson, red neck and all.  It's a free country, what can I say?   If they have a right to petition the government they should have the right to petition a company even if  supporting one person's right to self expression while denying it to another would tickle a dead duck with the irony.

As I've said previously, I have certain misgivings about someone being punished for statements made outside of business premises and outside of business hours. I'm irritated, I'm worried when Wal-Mart fires someone for privately discussing a Union.  It worries me that someone has a right to fire me for calling George Bush a dangerous and dishonest delusional.  The whole concept of corporations holding us hostage in that way is irritating, if legal, but  free country means free country and I'm sure conservatives would agree and perhaps that's why the frenzy.  You have to draft them into your mission before they stop to think,


So lets talk, yet once again, about the Framing effect. Frame it in terms of  a man's right to free speech and do it before we remember that the protection is against the government, not against Wal-Mart. Make it about religion and do it before anyone suggests that a man's right to stop sending a paycheck to someone whose actions damage the marketability of his product, because if you frame it as a right to profit, to do business free of regulation?  Do I have to continue?

Such a contradiction might prompt cynicism in certain people. Some might even find it funny to see how an attempt to avoid one boycott has fostered another, that people who "stand with Phil" will start to watch a show they didn't watch before making the show more profitable for the network they're boycotting, that standing up for the right to do dumb things doesn't make sense when you're attacking someone else's right to do dumb things.  I say certain people because, although it may sound arrogant, most people react and are prompted to react the the frame long before they look at the picture and think -- and even then, they don't think all that well.  It's like the people who called me anti-American for criticizing W, yet call themselves "Patriots" for criticizing Obama.

So before we drive this vehicle, let's look under the hood and wouldn't you know - Faith Drivers really is driven by faith and not by truth or logic or even a consistent argument.  It's not a defense of freedom for all, at all but a defense of special rights for special believers.

Ban it

Well as long as we're advocating that anything that might somehow be deleterious to society or dangerous to school children be banned, let's ban the Bible.  I mean it. I can't think of anything that's been behind more ugly things for more time and we just can't trust people not to use it badly. Oppression, torture, privation, sexual perversion, conquest, slavery issue forth from it like the stink from a sewer and Bible mongers have as James Madison said " been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority."  Even when that dishonest and sordid concretion of legend, lie and political  polemic isn't a direct source of evil, the many malicious memes it's fostered and nurtured have been an endless source of obstruction, bigotry, hatred and dehumanization -- an ever-ready tool for the greedy and nasty of the world to divide us into warring tribes. Ban it!

Take Representative Joe Barton (Republican of course, and Texas unsurprisingly.)  To prove that all the shit we've been belching into the air since the Industrial Revolution and Population explosion began, has had no effect on the very demonstrable warming of the planet, he cites and without apparent shame -- the Bible Flood Story.  Why? For no other reason than that he hopes to profit from an oil pipeline. It's only a tiny example. There are more than anyone can count in a lifetime.  Reasons why I can't live here or eat there. Why I can't serve on a jury, can't run for office. Why this one can't be a citizen, why this one can't marry that one, why this family can't own its children, why that one can't dance on Sunday or read that book or have this job: that obscene bolus of priestly excreta, reeking of blood and death and corruption.

Look, like all the foundational stories of the Bible, the Flood never happened.  It never could have happened, it never will happen and if it had occurred the evidence would be absolutely everywhere. It isn't anywhere. It's a story to scare children and their childish parents and it directly contradicts an endless pile of evidence. As a Judaised plagery of an older Babylonian tale, it even contradicts itself as a combination of two stories with Gods of two different names, two different dialects, two different numbers of animals and different periods of rain interleaved almost line by line. Your Sunday School teacher lied. The entire Bible floats on lies as its tiny universe floats on a primal ocean.  Billions of species on a boat that somehow got from a Turkish mountain to populate the Earth in a few years?  Why are there no Kangaroos in The Middle East?

What kind of good book is the eternal and mortal enemy of math, logic, science, biology, chemistry, genetics, history and human dignity?  You know the answer. You know why it was used to ban telescopes and microscopes and the scientific method - why it was used to ban Democracy, why it was used to murder Jews and Arians and Albigensians and Protestants and Gnostics and Muslims and virtually anyone who would not submit to that accursed thing.

I can't think of one positive development in human history that has not been suppressed or thwarted by Bible wielding barbarians; things like freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of association, freedom of inquiry, freedom to elect governments, freedom of information -- even the very freedom to exist. We've had nearly an eternity and nearly an infinity of examples showing that mankind can't be trusted to produce or safely use such weapons of mass seduction.  Ban it.

The universe in which the disparate stories from various sources have been set is very tiny to the modern eye.  It's a flat universe which can be observed directly from 'above' and it directly contradicts the real universe to an extent that defies analogy. Stories are made up from things that may have happened at different times and in different places or are fanciful interpretations of random events or fictional accounts -- when they have any relationship to history at all, but as long as this intellectual assault weapon exists it will be used; we will be assaulted with it by people of evil and perverted and tyrannical intent. 

Enough of this.  The Bible may contain some embedded cysts or pockets of wisdom, some moments of rapture that delight when taken out of context but it's purpose is to sell authority, justify authority, promote authority independent of the will of free people and is  not only offensive to anyone with any concern for the history it traduces, it's a weapon that can, has and always will be used in the assault on our freedom and on truth and on all that has raised us up from smelly, lousy, terrified and diseased apes squatting in the dirt eating carrion.

Vote the Bible!

I can hear the wailing and tooth gnashing all the way at the other end of the country from Texas.  Some woman is asked to cover up the "vote the Bible" T-shirt and it's like a wake up call to every stupid, seditious and  secessionist pervert in the Babble Belt to start howling that the request was because the Bible is "offensive."    Um, I guess that down in the dark heart A Texas, the illegality of campaigning or telling people how to vote in a polling place or its environs is neutralized if the deed is wrapped up in the Bible like a Burrito.  Wrapped up in the Christian version of course and served with a spicy ignorance sauce.  Show up at the polls in Bunghole, Texas with an Obama T-shirt and see how different the reaction is and who takes offense.

Look Tex, the Bible is all about obedience to an unelected, unaccountable and unquestionable authority that threatens to kill you and eat your children for the most ludicrously minor infraction like refusing to rape your sister in law. (Genesis 38: 8-10)  The Bible tells you to forgive debts after 7 years and forbids you to charge interest (which would make Capitalism illegal) if you "vote the Bible"  but that's OK I guess.  You have no idea how it works anyway, do you?  Or you can specify the Christian Bible wherein Saul of Tarsus tells you all those gruesome threats about eating your children (Leviticus 26:27-9) or those 613 Commandments mean nothing -- which makes the whole idea of voting the Bible meaningless. That should be a relief of course, thinking about the 42 children God murdered in hideous fashion for mocking a bald man. (2 Kings 2:23-24)

 Yeah, right, that's not what Pastor Pervy taught in Sunday School, or your idiot Attorney General  raves about and it's not what the Constitution allows if you want to get down to some basic literacy. The Bible is full of atrocities nearly all of us wouldn't want to exist in the world any more and besides, the Christian version says that following Jesus with love in your heart absolves you of those laws and threats of violence (Romans 8:2)  Why the hell can't you be content with that and stop trying to take over a secular democracy that allows the freedom of religion you take for granted.  Why the hell can't you practice the religion you claim to believe in?

Let them get pregnant, like God intended.

What's worse than a bunch of creepy old man religious perverts conspiring against the health and well being of women? Well, perhaps a creepy young woman trying to make sure -- using copious amounts of taxpayer money -- to fight a requirement that health insurers cover the modest cost of birth control. Worse still, she's fighting something that in some cases is a medical necessity and in very many cases will prevent women from becoming unable to work and winding up in poverty and their children on public assistance.

Such things don't seem to matter to GOP apparatchiks like Pam Bondi, Florida Attorney General who is suing the Federal Government over the Affordable Care Act, a law that is starting to provide health care to Florida's 4.5 million uninsured and access to contraception. As the ACA will come before the US Supreme Court this month, the redundancy of this suit is as obvious as the smug unconcern Bondi has for truth, justice and freedom from the tyranny of religious nuts.

Sold as another attempt at "smaller" government, it's really nothing but a power play by the Religious Rich to make their perverted, obsessive, inhumane and antique dogmas into public policy no matter the cost. Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi may not be one of these foul, disgusting old men, but she sure as hell works for them while collecting a salary paid by the people she'd like to keep barefoot and pregnant and poor and in thrall to the superstition salesmen with the effrontery to use our freedom of religion and our tax revenues against us.

Sex. Lies and Santorum

"He is imposing his values on the Christian church. He can categorize those values anyway he wants. I’m not going to,”

lied Republican candidate Rick Santorum to an assemblage of Tea Bag idiots immediately after having categorized President Obama's "values" and his "agenda"as being

“not about you. It’s not about your quality of life. It’s not about your jobs. It’s about some phony ideal. Some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible. A different theology,”

Yes, some phony ideal is on the agenda. A phony ideal involving liberty, Democracy and a constitution that never mentions God or gods or scriptures of any religion and declares that there shall be no religion in government. Science is a phony ideal to sanctimonious Santorum too because we all know that Senators Jesus, Mary and Joseph agree with the oil companies and that the president's job, as 'Rick' told the 'baggers, is to keep gas prices down (and the subsidies up, no doubt.)

No sir, all that Washington, Jefferson and Madison secular prattle is phony and if we're looking for full employment, a decent quality of life and personal liberty you must turn to The Christian Scriptures which forbid us to charge interest on a loan or obtain a divorce or marry whom we will or even to enjoy sex when it isn't only for making babies. Some churches I won't mention have interpreted it to demand a king chosen of God rather than an elected government, but don't bother Rick with that. It's already on his agenda.

So why is this sex-fearing, woman hating, half-witted fake theologian; this lame-brained Longinus and meretricious medievalist mewling about theology while pronouncing Ernulphian maledictions on what he pretends are President Obama's values, cursing them one by one? Because theological statements don't have to be true, you see; don't have to be supported by evidence and are easily and frequently used to do horrible things to people. Cognitively impaired, confused and historically ignorant "conservatives" seem pre-lubricated to receive ecclesiastical wisdom without discomfort and Faith invents facts as well as it rejects them to the despair of brother Ockham.

So Obama, who thinks a Harvard Law degree makes him as good as a white. Christian man, agrees with Justice Scalia that religious freedom does not legalize acts done in the name of religion and yet, conservatives still want to shove the notion that he's a radical, Liberal, Christian-hating Sodomite Commie up the national hoo-ha and true to form, the 'baggers assume the position and take it.

How can any curse suffice?

Rebels without a cause

To be honest, I've come to hate activists, even when I agree with them. The passion behind so many crusades has often rendered the crusaders irrational, intemperate and more than half blind. It prompts them to accept spurious facts and figures and sometimes to invent them and in too many cases there's a kind of regenerative feedback that mimics a PA system with too much gain. It begins to howl and screech. Whatever was said into the microphone and what the howling is about matters little, only the joy of crusading, which not only surpasseth understanding, but prevents it.

Take genital mutilation, for instance. On the list of people I hate well in excess of my general contempt for humanity are those who painfully slice up young girls in a way that is intended to prevent them from enjoying sex as an adult. Yes, we have a constitutional ban on government interference with "free exercise" of religion, but we have a long standing interpretation of it that limits that free exercise to otherwise legal actions. We are, even so, usually able to make fair decisions because we distinguish between minor cosmetic surgery and malicious mutilation without a lot of hysteria. We can sometimes tell whether a comparison is ludicrous or not. We're able to take notice of the testimony of close to a billion males that it's not an impairment; unless we're prone to activism, that is.

Is circumcision, demanded by two of the major religious categories, really the kind of "mutilation" that falls outside of constitutional protection? To the activists of San Francisco, there are no uncertainties and certainly no distinction between something that is initially agonizing and a cruel lifelong impairment and something that isn't either. And let me be clear, this isn't a subject that will be illuminated by our traditional, left-right dichotomy. It simply doesn't matter whether it's liberals or Conservatives behind it; whether it's neither or both. I'd go so far as to say that the stated justifications for banning the circumcision of male babies is irrelevant to the passion for it and has too much to do with "aesthetics" to be more than an excuse. So I'm not going to indulge myself in modern fashion by invoking the traditional straw men ( and women of course) and restrict my contempt for people who need to have a cause and need it so much they aren't quite scrupulous about the high contrast, black and white scenarios they use in their passion plays.

If the crusade succeeds, much like the one that captured Jerusalem in 1099, the City by the bay will be as slippery a thing to hold on to. Jews and Muslims will simply use maternity facilities elsewhere or have the religious rite performed elsewhere. The Brit Milah, given in Gen. 17:10-14 to Abraham and in Lev. 12:3 is carried out on the eighth day. Muslims have a similar guideline. The law them would be only an inconvenience, like having to drive to the next town to purchase alcohol is in some places.

What then will it accomplish than, after all the sound and fury and obsession with penises wanes? Certainly nothing to stop what was intended to be stopped unless a further incursion by the dominant religion into the neighborhood of tolerance was part of the game all along.

Free exercise

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;"

All well and good, but as it so often happens, the ignorant, angry rabble the constitution was designed to prevent from directly controlling our country disagree. According to a CNN poll this morning, 64% of Americans responding, support a federal ban on garments that hide the face; garments which are required by the free exercise of some religious denominations. So much for our constant squealing about Freedom.

Where are the cries of too much government I have to listen to constantly? There's a move here to eliminate licensing for professions that now require them, like Yacht brokerage -- in the interest of "less government" and because, as the local paper says, "it will make it easier to get into the business." I'm sure it will, especially for the unscrupulous.

I had to listen to a tantrum in Miami International Airport the other day, when a man decided the overly long walk to the customs hall was the result of "too much government," but telling us how to constitute our families, who we may marry, what clothes we may not wear, what religion we may not freely exercise? Well, now, that's different!

The great circle of stupid

"An appeals court has ruled that anyone involved in an extramarital affair can be prosecuted for first-degree criminal sexual conduct, a felony punishable by up to life in prison."

Or so says the Eagle Forum run by Rod Parsley, President and Founder of World Harvest Church in Ohio. Actually it's more likely that Judge William Murphy of the Michigan Court of Appeals was indulging in a bit of reductio ad absurdem in order to mock the obvious venality of the prosecution -- and in this case, the absurdity of the Michigan law is apparent without much reduction.

It's all about one Lloyd Waltonen who gave a cocktail waitress prescription drugs in exchange for sex and was charged with criminal sexual conduct, a felony, although the sex was consensual.

Of course those charges were dismissed, but on appeal The Michigan Attorney General, Mike Cox (I'm not making that up) in an effort to ruin Waltonen's life in any way he could, dredged up some statute stating that any sexual activity committed during the same time as a felony constitutes criminal sexual conduct. Since adultery is a felony in Michigan, (I'm not making this up) he technically could get life in prison for consensual sex, although that's never happened and never likely will unless of course we allow demented parasitic vermin like Parsley to get involved in the judicial process. (more about that later)

So what was apparently a disgusted judge trying to make a fool of the hypocritical and hyperventilating Mr. Cox, (who as you would expect of a moralizing Republican, has admitted to an adulterous and hence felonious relationship himself,) might as well have a target tattooed on his forehead.

All of this staged display of irony of course, has escaped not only the resident and hairy-palmed hand of God at The Center For Moral Clarity, the World Harvest Church and the Eagle Forum, but Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell's nominee for the Alaska Judiciary Council, Don Haase of Valdez. Haase, (he pronounces it Haze, but we won't go there this time) loves the idea of arresting people for obeying his religious laws, and why, you might ask? Premarital sex should be outlawed because it could "cause violence" and "spread disease," he told the Senate Judiciary Committee. To his credit, he's either not quite as crazy as Parsley or perhaps less credit worthy, he's just trying to sound sane long enough to be confirmed, because while he doesn't claim that adultery or pre-marital sex should be a felony, he thinks it should be a crime.

Haase of course is a past president of Eagle Forum Alaska, a blog that advocates for what it calls conservative principles much like those of Medieval Europe. So we've come as close to full circle as we can while talking about idiots and madmen with no regard for freedom or the US constitution. We've come full circle from a secular liberal democracy and the counsel of intelligent and reasonable men as well.

In GOP we trust

There are a few things that seem to be endless about the American Lie Machine and it's quest to rephrase our founding principles, rewrite our documents and refashion us into the government by divine right the colonists left behind. The endless assault on the First Amendment is one of them.

Congressman J. Randy Forbes (R-VA), the founder and chairman of the Congressional Prayer Caucus, sponsored a bill to make "In God We Trust" the official motto on the United States of America, giving unlawful support to an unspecified, but intentionally Christian God and allowing and encouraging the carving of religious credos into the stone of our institutions and establishing state Theism contrary to the letter and intent of the US Constitution. He was troubled by a pattern of omitting God from the nation's heritage, said he. Could a talking snake be any more devious? Of course omitting God is not the same thing as preventing state recognition of Forbes' god and that's the forbidden and worm eaten fruit we're being offered and that some of us are deluded and befuddled enough to bite into.

"There is a small minority who believes America does not have the right to trust in God, who believes the United States should not affirm trust in God, and who actively seek to remove any recognition of that trust,"

But the writers of the constitution weren't a small minority and had no intention whatever of forbidding the free exercise of religion by citizens -- only of forbidding the government officially to recognize any religion, sect, denomination or cult as preferred. But as I said, it's devious. There is nothing in our laws and no credible movement to prevent any American from trusting in any God or gods or principles or making statements to that effect -- or from ignoring them. There is the First Amendment to prevent the government from doing so.

Although Republicans are notorious for portraying the government as an alien force, separate from the people and their interests, it's interesting to see how in this instance, they're quite willing to see the people and the government as congruent or identical because equivocation is the armature about which is built this grotesque idol. But of course not paying for you to engrave your God on the wall I paid for isn't a rejection of anything but the government's right to do so, which is the precise intent of our constitution. There is no official God or gods in the United States, no official belief -- and this legislation furthers only the intent to create one.

Forbes claims that the resolution is meant to affirm the importance of God in the heritage of the United States, but refuses to address the question of who the "we" are. If he's talking about the people as people, perhaps he's right, at least in the sense of a majority of them, but to a good number of Americans for whom the right to be irreligious, atheistic or pagan is protected, this resolution is an exclusion act. There is no me in that we.

Small minority? I'm not so sure, what with the penalties attendant to disbelief and doubt and unsanctioned belief, but so what? A small minority of Americans are of African descent or Jewish decent or indigenous descent and the triumph of our democracy is to protect their rights, their numbers notwithstanding. I might say that a large minority of Republicans are asserting that intellectual minorities don't have the same rights when it comes to private thought and this mumbling against "small minorities" is nothing but an attempt to marginalize intellectual non-conformism.

In God We Trust isn't all that historical anyway. Although some, but not all US coins have had it stamped on them since about 1864 as part of the attempt to give a boost to the unpopular war, the motto only became "official" in 1956, shortly after the Knights of Columbus and other religious lobbyists convinced Dwight Eisenhower it would help give Americans another reason to hate and fear Communism.

The first appearance of "In God is our trust" was in Francis Key's poem, later set to an old drinking song and made into an anthem which didn't become official until the 1930's, by which time there wasn't much left of Jefferson's bones to be furiously gyrating in his coffin. That he would do so is of course contested by the plethora of Church funded revisionist historians like All About History who make statements saying President Thomas Jefferson wrote,

"The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time" and "Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are of God?"

which words, of course, Jefferson never spoke or wrote. Perhaps you can see why the GOP stands against public education, science and history -- and for the Christian Bible and Christian government. Perhaps somewhere, the shade of Galileo is wryly smiling and George III, Rex Dei Gratia is giggling because the long upward climb to freedom is sliding back into the reeking sump from which it emerged.

Terrorists win! Terrorists win!

It's hard to say they didn't and their victory has nothing to do with the incompetence that let Osama bin Laden escape from Afghanistan. What can you call it but a victory when we've borrowed and wasted trillions on wars that we simply can't afford and we've been torn apart politically and culturally to the point where we will defend the indefensible, accept the unacceptable and every passing cloud seems like a piece of the sky falling.




Nearly nine years after the attacks on New York and Washington, the World Trade Center towers have become like the relics of some saint to be preserved in some myth if not in a jar while the contrived phrase "they hate us for our freedoms" echoes in mockery while one by one, the freedoms we pretend are a reason for their resentment are put against a wall and shot -- by us.

Any war, just or unjust, aggressive or defensive, necessary or the result of lies, is a test of the freedoms of speech and of the press. This alleged war has been a test of freedom from unreasonable searches as well, but now even freedom of religion is being tested both in the legislature and by the propaganda organizations with seemingly unlimited money, power and influence over the rage addled minds of the public. The millions of riders on the New York Transit system will soon be reading ads showing yet another picture of the twin towers and an airliner along with a crescent. Why There? it asks. Because we have freedom of religion, I answer. Because the government may not legislate against the free exercise of a religion or determine that one religion is to be preferred over another, I say to the ignorant, uncaring mob and the sinister forces that play them like pawns.

Does anything support the myth, popular in Islamic countries, that the US is out to destroy them and to kill Muslims better than this ad, this attitude, this anger? Of course we're eager to engineer Armageddon and so are they. Of course the Terrorists have won, since to bankrupt and confuse us and weaken us and set us against our principles and best interests was exactly what they set out to do. A popular uprising against justice and the rule of law has been the goal of many but none has been so successful in my lifetime as what has been accomplished by bin Laden and the Neocon Republicans with the aid of various radical supremacist groups foreign and domestic.

Why there? Well to be truthful it isn't there, only near there, but the answer is the same as it is to the question of why we didn't forbid radical Christian churches in Oklahoma City or the political anti-government speech that brought about the Federal Building attack and continues to fester. Because we all have the right to worship without interference from anti religious groups and from the government. That would be the government that's supposed to stay out of our lives, but only if we're of an approved religion.

We don't forbid KKK meetings even in neighborhoods full of people the Klan hates. We allow Tea Party extremists to wave guns at political rallies and threaten the lives of the president's family and to overthrow the government by force. We allow Christian churches to preach about the coming destruction of the Jews, the infidels and the end of the world anywhere they damn well please. But they're not Muslims, as a rule.

Our founding fathers offered praise for Islam, told Muslim leaders this was not a Christian country. There have been Muslim citizens in this country for centuries. There are millions of born in the USA Muslims in civilian and military life. When you take away the rights of one citizen for illegal reasons, you take away the rights of all and indeed if "they" hate us for being free, they're effective in making us less so and with our eager cooperation.

There's a bell tolling for us, for our freedom, for our souls and that thing up there in the steeple, wrapped in the flag and ringing it doesn't look anything like Osama.

Research this!

Sometimes it feels like trying to explain calculus to a deaf canary. The idea that permitting anything some religious group doesn't like is infringing on their self-given right to tell other people what to do or to punish them for doing or not doing it, seems impossible to counter no matter how obvious or how long you try. I've tried for a long time, but it's like the Shroud of Turin, even if you could show it's made from polyester and has a made in Taiwan tag its authenticity returns again and again.

In the interest of perpetuating the kind of de facto but illegal kind of control they have exerted over private and public affairs for so long, they have invented a mythology wherein our government really owes so much to 21st century esoteric Christianist philosophy, that it's best simply to let delusional perverts and enemies of freedom dictate to us regardless of contrary laws and public sentiment.

Take the Family Research Council whose President Tony Perkins, a man whose face seems to belie any assertions of straightness, insists that allowing such people in the military as offend his flock is -- wait for this -- infringing on the rights of those pretend Christians who also serve: the right to be a bigot that is. It would "undermine religious liberty."

Now I don't recall that the Constitution confers or protects or affirms any such rights. It only tells the government not to establish an official religion. It says nothing about protecting the prejudices of religious bullies with neurotic phobias about sex. It says nothing about creating an army that President Tony Perkins feels comfortable with at whatever the cost may be to the religious and personal freedom of others.

President Tony Perkins isn't likely to remember that when President Truman integrated the armed forces, it offended the "rights" of racists in the very same way. Anyone who simply couldn't bear the thought of being in the same barracks with one of those lesser races God wanted to keep separate from his own light skinned people, just had to leave and of course the same sort of people will be offended by sharing a foxhole with someone with different sexual preferences. You know -- that's just too damned bad, President Tony Perkins and I'm quite sure our military will cope quite nicely and for God's sake, give it up and call Rentboy.com -- you know you want to.

Desert Cross

"the Constitution does not oblige government to avoid any public acknowledgment of religion's role in society"

said Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. The Cross may be an affirmation of Christian beliefs but it's also used to "honor and respect heroism." The cross he refers to of course is the one erected 75 years ago in the Mojave Desert to "honor" the dead of the First World War, including those without Christian beliefs; those whose own beliefs were inimitable to and lives diminished by those with Christian beliefs. Yes, Tony, there are and were atheists in foxholes: Jews, Muslims, animists, Unitarians and others -- and no Tony, that cross doesn't salute them be they heroes or clerk-typists: it salutes you and your religion at their expense and mine. It doesn't acknowledge that there are religious people in America, it tells you they're the ones who count most.

"Here, one Latin cross in the desert evokes far more than religion. It evokes thousands of small crosses in foreign fields marking the graves of Americans who fell in battles, battles whose tragedies are compounded if the fallen are forgotten"

continued Kennedy hoping apparently that in the passionate flaunting of murky emotional tropes we will forget that the most moving of war memorials contains nothing but names: hoping apparently that you've never been to one of those cemeteries in Europe and seen the graves marked by the Star of David and memorializing bones than didn't fight for or die to uphold Christianity or an allegedly Christian nation. The Desert Cross isn't designed to help us remember anyone but to remember Jesus of the Gospels. Waving a cross in their dead faces isn't designed to be a memento of them, but a proud rebuke toward others and another bit of puffed-up braggadocio in the same fashion as our traditional bully-boy patriotism. We're number one -- and that's because we're Christian.

What Judge Tony is saying here is that they don't matter, they don't deserve to matter; don't deserve the dignity of being buried without alien iconography. What America is hearing is that we can't spare a dime for Public TV but putting up and maintaining Christian symbols on public property is public duty because the United States of America would really be the Christian States of America God wants it to be if we hadn't allowed those people in.

"The cross is not a universal symbol of sacrifice. It is the symbol of one particular sacrifice, and that sacrifice carries deeply significant meaning for those who adhere to the Christian faith"

states Justice Steven's dissenting, and historically correct opinion, an opinion soon to retire from the bench. The symbol does not represent the United States, it does not represent all of us or describe what we're about. It does not remind us of the unnecessary and pointless slaughter of the Great War conducted by the Christian kings of Christian nations asserting Christian values. It does not remind us that we have a secular government and we designed it and maintain it to protect our individual beliefs and our right to practice our creeds and sects and religions without government interference and coercion, be it subtle or overt.

Once again we have been made aware of how precarious is our freedom of conscience, our freedom from interference in our private beliefs and our right to be included as Americans in a state that is under relentless religious pressure to be exclusive. We have a Court willing, it seems, to reevaluate and revisit many things we thought were decided and that would be a great many things indeed if next year's Court leaned more heavily toward giving our government a more religious stance when it comes to matters of morality. We can expect some serious fervor surrounding the next appointment. If you value religious freedom and indeed if you value religion itself, maybe now's the time to pray.

God is not religioius?

And invoking God on our currency is not religious either, or so say the judicial theologians sometimes known as the Federal Appeals Court. The California court decided 2 to 1 to overturn their own 2002 ruling that sided with atheist Michael Newdow's complaint that doing so established a State Monotheistic religion and violated the constitutionally mandated separation of church and state. Did they see the light, or did they feel the heat?

Why? It may seem hard to us to accept that God is not a religious figure or concept, but the reasoning behind the decision: that the government's power is limited by God's power, certainly is a religious atatement and even more certainy is at odds with the Constitution and the philosophy behind it. In fact the Biblical God seems very much against the idea of choosing leaders by popular vote if you remember the fate of Saul and that European Christians could be excommunicated for voting well into the 19th century.

The "pledge of allegiance" is also constitutional said the majority.

"The pledge of allegiance serves to unite our vast nation through the proud recitation of some of the ideals upon which our Republic was founded and for which we continue to strive,"

the two judges said." An interesting concept seeing as both of these shibboleths are rather recent and the founders of the Republic would have started a second revolution if they were around. I never feel more disunited with my countrymen than when at various club functions I have to stand up like a schoolchild and swoon over a symbol and affirm somebody else's religious delusion. Of course I always say "Under Fogg" but that's another matter.

As I've reminded my readers many times, the pledge was not originally about God or its relationship to our Republic, it was about the flag and nationalism and freedom and justice, two out of four of which are good ideas. Forcing children to swear to pray to God in a public school is an abomination and an attempt to punish people who do not believe. That everyone else has come to see this as a part of every public and private meeting or convocation is just silly, but the real comedy is watching federal judges bend over so far backward to be fair to people of superstition that their heads might just as well be fully inserted.

You will recite after me. . . . or else

The pledge of Allegiance has come a long way from a short declaration appearing in a Christian Socialist Children's magazine in 1892 to its current status as a somewhat longer treasured icon of patriotic sentiment and theological affirmation recited by young and old in all sorts of settings. That was back when Socialism and Christianity were seen as allied ideas and back when our country was pumping itself up and cheering on its urge to empire and celebrating it's chauvinistic urges.

It's hard to overestimate the fanatical insistence of Americans that all must swear an oath that calls this secular Republic a "Nation under God," hard as that may be to define, and calls upon us to be an eternal ally of a piece of cloth. A few years ago , when someone in California filed suit against a school district claiming forced recitation of a religious oath was unconstitutional (it is) half the cars on my local roads, thousands of miles away had "Under God" painted on their windows by irate owners who were clearly in opposition to a citizen's right not to have official religious beliefs forced upon them and their children. The kind of people who hold an annual claim to victimhood and insist that no one impede their right to force religious observance on others. Freedom and justice for all? What are you, a damned Liberal?

67 years ago, or three score and 7 if you prefer, the Supreme Court ruled that forced recitation was a violation of the first amendment and that was a decade before the "Under God" was added by President Eisenhower to help make the USSR look more satanic at the expense of Americans who don't believe in disembodied spirits living in the sky.

You have to ask yourself; if it's unconstitutional to force a citizen to declare a political position, how much more unlawful is it to insist he declare religious feelings not his own?

Not lawful enough to dissuade a Maryland school teacher from shouting at, demanding recitation and finally having a student taken into custody by the police amidst a chorus of mockery for exercising the rights we love to flaunt in front of the world as "Our Freedoms."

In the American madhouse, where asking children to listen to an introduction by the President is compared with Pol Pot and the slaughter of millions, where government administered health insurance is compared with Hitler and Fascism and the very idea of progress is "Marxist," what should we say about people who are not only comfortable with forcing their political and religious views down the throats of other people's children? Well, we've run out of outrageous hyperbole, thanks to Fox and the Republicans. Most of us aren't quite smart or even sane enough to understand a careful explanation of how we have given away our birthright and become the same kind of oppressors our forefathers tried to escape by coming here and that we' don't have a hell of a lot to brag about in the freedom department that most other countries have more of.

Do yourself a favor - support the ACLU, because freedom can't protect itself and all the guns and bombs and battleships can't bring it back once Americans throw it away.

The Irish Inquisition

I watched Julia Sweeney in Letting Go of God on Showtime the other night. Seeing how her thought processes led her at first to reject Biblical literalism and finally Theism and religion in general, put a big smile on my face since it mirrored my own in so much detail. For some reason it seems like the large majority of atheists I know come either from Roman Catholic or Jewish backgrounds but I won't speculate here about the reasons.



There is evidence that religiosity in the US is on the decline, with fewer people seeing religion as a solely positive influence and more feeling that religious teachings are out of date, but of course the opposition makes a lot of noise and has a lot of political power. I don't know whether any of the above applies in heavily Catholic Ireland, but the anti-blasphemy law which went into effect yesterday is sure to be challenged and the high profile of some of the challengers is sure to cause considerable embarrassment to those who have to enforce it. Whether Catholics in Ireland are as likely to let go of God as they are elsewhere, those in Ireland who have and those of other traditions are going to have a field day.

The Irish constitution extends religious freedom only to Christians and that may be a surprise to many who see Europe in general as moving away from belief and from Church domination. It's worthy of curiosity to see whether the ordinary practice of other religious traditions will constitute blasphemy as well. Will it be blasphemous to say that Jesus was not the actual son of God but permissible to accuse Jews of murdering him and of eating Christian babies? I guess we'll see. Will showing Letting go of God be punishable? Will it be illegal to publish Nietzsche, or Dawkins? Michael Nugent, chairman of Atheist Ireland calls this idea

"dangerous because it incentives [sic] religious outrage, and because Islamic states led by Pakistan are already using the wording of this Irish law to promote new blasphemy laws at UN level."

Dangerous indeed and so diametrically opposed to American views of religion -- at least as reflected by those who wrote the Constitution -- that an attempt to import it to the US wouldn't be surprising. I remember former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's attempt to close the Brooklyn Museum because of a painting he considered blasphemous. ( it wasn't) Many people still wish ihe could have been successful.

The US constitution certainly does not grant special rights to Christians or to any other religious groups and that fact seems to be a massive thorn in the side of the religious right; a thorn they'd love to remove and I will be amazed if some Republican doesn't attempt to introduce something similar by next Christmas. The test of the Irish law is in whether it outrages a large number of people and if we had such a law within the viewership of Fox, we can be sure that outrage would flow forth like a mighty flood of medieval values upon the land and our courts would grind to a halt whild civilization is one again snatched from the jaws of victory.

Jesus laughed

"How dangerous it is in sensible things to use metaphorical expressions unto the people, and what absurd conceits they will swallow in their literals."

-Thomas Browne - Pseudoxia Epidemica-

Making sense out of someone else's religion is a bit like looking at a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces don't all fit and some are taped in place or hidden under others. Take the Mary and Joseph story. We're supposed to believe that since Joseph was too old to have sex with his obscenely young bride Mary, her pregnancy was a bit of a surprise - until of course she told him that God, in the form of a bird, did the deed. The subsequent pregnancies resulting in brothers and sisters might have been harder to explain, unless the bird left some blue pills for the old man -- or unless we ignore old Occam: "entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem" which means don't make shit up just so people won't laugh at your bogus story.

That of course would have Jesus' brother Jacob the true heir to the throne of David, making him the Messiah; because after all, Joseph, from whose family the title was inherited, wasn't his real father. OK, so we don't ask and we just tape that piece in place and ignore what is underneath.

Anyway, one can choose to treat the alleged divinity of Jesus as a metaphor, which makes sense, or literally, which makes absolutely none. If you're of the latter persuasion, which didn't approach universality for many centuries into the Christian Era, (if it ever really did) the flimsiness of your construction is likely to make you touchy and humorless if not aggressively pugnacious. Imagine the fundamentalist's reaction to a poster showing A young Joseph in bed with a frustrated looking Mary and titled "Poor Joseph, God was a hard act to follow."



The Church that put up the billboard in Aukland, New Zealand simply wished to point out the absurd conceit of swallowing this literal fundamentalist interpretation. Archdeacon Glynn Cardy of The St Matthew-in-the-City Anglican church said he wanted to inspire people to talk about the Christmas story: to challenge a fundamentalist interpretation that's obviously pasted together from pieces torn from other religions, rather than swallowing the cocktail.

"What we're trying to do is to get people to think more about what Christmas is all about. Is it about a spiritual male God sending down sperm so a child would be born, or is it about the power of love in our midst as seen in Jesus?"

Predictably, it wasn't well received by those who demand that everyone else swallow the same mind numbing potion and within hours an irate man was trying to paint over the image. Local Catholic spokesmen were up in arms and a "conservative" group called Family First was calling the whole thing irresponsible. It's nice to know that "conservatives" despise religious freedom in New Zealand as much as they do here. I mean it's one thing to be able to speak out against secular authority, but suggesting that God's own sacred chicken doesn't make half breed, wholly God children with young girls who somehow remain virginal throughout multiple pregnancies and births! What fools these mortals be!

If only I could claim such protection against people who disagree with me.